Istanbul

Riding through the streets of Istanbul is strikingly different than riding through the streets of Ankara. Old houses and new mixed together. And by old I mean Ottoman Empire old. They're old, wooden and falling down but for one reason or another cannot be torn down. So they sit. There are the fish sellers. They occasionally sell fresh fish and occasionally they sell fried fish sandwiches. There are the fresh stuffed muscles on the dock. Yes, the dock. Three famous bridges, several famous docks, uncountable ferries, tours of the Bosphorus, tankers and freighters, and various fishermen plying the choppy waters in various forms of fishing boats. Ankara is where I live. Istanbul is where I wander.

Are you from the city or an outlying town?

Back in June I went to a wedding with a friend of mine in her village. Or rather, I went on a marathon celebration with my friend, stayed in her village, and did a whole lot of travel on the road. It went something like this...
Go to a different part of town that happens to be more conservative than mine. Wear skirt without nylons. Feel rather uncomfortable. Oooppss.. (Hadn't done that before and won't do it again.) Hang out with friend's mom while friend and friend's sister-in-law get their hair done. Go as a family to a circumcision celebration for friend's 12 year-old cousin. Head to the village. Stop and eat dinner at 12 pm on the way to the village. Arrive at village home at a very late hour. Go to sleep. Wake up, eat breakfast, get ready for wedding. Go as a family to friend's mother's hometown near the village for part one of the wedding. Have fun at wedding, dance, eat food, meet a million relatives. Leave wedding, go to house. Bride and groom have religious ceremony. Leave house, head to Sivas (a town waaaaaay to the east of Ankara). In Sivas find location for part two of the wedding. Have fun at wedding, dance, eat cake. Watch bride and groom's civil ceremony. Dance more. Head out to car and drive back to village, stopping to have soup on the way at 1 am. Sleep in car. Arrive back at village at 3 am. Sleep more.
The next day, celebration marathon officially over, we had a late breakfast and wandered around. At one point we ran into one of my friend's many cousins wives who I had met the previous day at the wedding. She asked me where I was from. My response - America. Her follow-up question - am I from the city or an outlying town? My response after trying not to laugh - I'm from Alaska.
To explain such a quandry, I suppose I have to explain a bit of Turkey's design. We have provinces, each named after the main city in the province. So there's Ankara province and in Ankara province is the main city of Ankara as well as many outlying towns and villages. The common question here when you say where you are from is my friend's cousin's question - from the city or from the village. So in her question she revealed that she thought of America as similar to a Turkish province, having one main city and several smaller towns.
I wondered why she would ask such a question. Asking my friend was out of the question. Their family is full of gossip. The last thing I wanted was for my question to make it back to the cousin.
I learned the answer just last weekend at...another wedding. Talking to the same cousin I found out that she finished school through either fifth grade or eighth grade. She and I are the same age. Apparently when I was enjoying fifth grade and/or eighth grade, in her town there was no high school. She loved school and did well at school, but would have had to leave her small town for a much larger city in order to go to high school. (I have a feeling this might remind my mom of rural Alaska when she was in high school.) Her mom was fearful for her. Girls who stayed in dorms occasionally became pregnant. So significant was it that she stay pure and clean, she was not permitted to attend school in another town.
Today there is a high school in or very near her village. Her daughters will have the opportunity to go to high school.
Before I laugh again at such a question as her's I have to ask myself - this one who is my age, did she have the chance to learn? Whether or not she did, is it that important that she know that America is large, that Alaska is no longer a part of Russia, or that cars made in Europe and cars made in America are driven the same way? In view of eternity these facts seem terribly insignificant.

Rock Climbing in Olympos

Last week while on language break/vacation down by Antalya I discovered again the wonderful world of rock climbing. Olympos is amazing - lots of really, really old rocks left by those who worshiped everything from Zeus to the Real Lord. It's also a place where supposedly a pirate died. And...it's a climbing mecca.

Weddings and a...Circumsision Party

This past weekend I found myself partying halfway across Turkey. Literally. Friday afternoon I went over to a friend's house to, well, wait for my friend to get back from having her hair done. As soon as the girls came back, we were off. First stop...a circumcision party near downtown Ankara. This marks a coming of age in a boy's life and usually takes place between 6 and 12. In this case, the boy was 10 or 12 (I kept getting different answers). He's been battling cancer for a while and had to wait until the upper end of the age range for his party (an presumably circumcision, although I never did have the guts to ask).
Party number one down and it was off to the village, about an two hours east of Ankara. Crashed out for the night at my friend's house in the village. Saturday morning we all crawl out of bed, have breakfast and get ready for a marathon wedding day. First the village wedding party, about a half hour east of my friend's village. We ate (men first then the women), we danced (Turkish folk dances), the women gossiped (so did the men), we danced some more.
Then it was time to leave the village wedding and head east to Sivas for the groom's side to have a wedding party. This is the farthest east in Turkey I had been so far. Five hours farther east is the town of Erzurum and after that comes Armenia. The Sivas party was a little different than the village wedding in that it was inside, there was no meal, and company was mixed. Other than that, it was fairly typical. We danced folk dances, guests (friends and family) pinned gold on the bride and groom and we ate cake.
At about 10:30 or 11 everyone headed for home, we for the village. I was in bed by 3 am and...drum-roll, please...slept in until 8:40. Yes, this is a miracle. Still slightly in shock that I traveled all the way to Sivas to dance folk dances and eat cake.

A Trip to the Center of the...Country

This past weekend I decided to shake things up a bit and...get out of Ankara. Wait. For me, that really isn't shaking things up a whole lot. This I admit. I get out of Ankara on a regular basis. I have to say that this frequent trip out of Ankara business does make you love home when the bus rolls back into town, though. I'm getting a bit ahead of myself.

I have friends and co-workers in Kayseri who are currently without other co-workers in the city. They also just had a baby in March. Woohoo! I get mixed reactions to traveling outside of Ankara. Some friends do the same and understand. Others are jealous, but at the same time love to brag about how much their foreign friend has seen of the country. Still others worry for me while I'm on the road. Make that all of them. All my friends worry for me when I'm on the road, while I'm living alone in Ankara, when I get home late...basically my friends worry. A baby is a reason to travel that is 100% normal. I've found the way to travel! Now if I can just convince all my friends to continually be having babies.... I think I'll just have to settle with being weird for a while.

Hop on the bus Friday afternoon (bought the bus ticket Thursday - I love the last minute convenience of life in Turkey!) and 5 hours later was in Kayseri. Met my friends at the bus station, went out for birthday dinner and then proceeded to have one of the most relaxing weekends I've had in a long time. I would love to give you all my impressions of Kayseri culture, but alas, I spent Saturday chatting it up and flipping through American magazines. And Sunday? Two friends from America showed up right around breakfast (this is not exactly normal - a great surprise!). Sat around talking to them until it was time to go to fellowship in the afternoon. Great teaching from Heb. 11 from a nat'l brother. Back home. Pizza and a few rounds of Master Chef Australia. So as far as special Kayseri "events", I didn't do a whole lot. Wait - I did eat pastırma Friday night. My dictionary says it's "preserve of dried meat", "cured spiced beef" or "pastrami". My friend says "dried garlic meat." None of these are quite as appetizing as the real thing, I assure you. Kayseri folk are quite proud of their "dried garlic meat", so she says.

Yesterday, off to Kapadokya to meet up with a group of students here from Liberty. Again, no camera because I was feeling lazy. Yes, I went to thousand or so year old historical sites and did not take pictures because I was feeling lazy. You know you live in Turkey when...

Caught a bus last night at 6:30 out of Nevşehir and was in my house by 11 pm or so. And I did buy the bus ticket at the counter that afternoon. As I rolled into Ankara, in between waking and sleeping, I thought, I love my city with all of its ministry buildings and government offices. Yes, sadly, this did come to mind. But it is home. And I do love it.

The Day of Unpreparedness

So today was going to be a quiet day. I was going to study, find a pack cover for tomorrow's hike (the forecast declares rain in our future...again), and teach my friend Gizem to ice skate. The studying happened - love Tchibo and their 2.95 filter coffee (although it would be nice if they had a bathroom...but then again, a bathroom in a store sort of promotes shoplifting). The pack cover was found and purchased. In the purchasing process I also may have stumbled upon one of the only cross-country skiers in the entire city. Winter is only a few short months away, folks!
And that is where all good planning ended. After I first left the house I realized I had left without my umbrella. This is not a good situation to be in when the clouds are looming black overhead. So I turned around and headed home to pick up my umbrella which was no where to be found. I have to admit, the first thought to enter my head was not a charitable thought. I assumed that someone had stolen my umbrella the night before. Nothing to be done, I would simply have to buy an umbrella while I was out. Which I did, from a toy store (first mistake) for 5 lira (second mistake). The third mistake of the day, I left home without suitable long sleeves. Not only was I something to stare at in my bright blue shirt, I was possibly going to be very cold later. So into one of my favorite stores I tromp and buy a new, very pink hoodie for 15 lira. Yes, we are at 20 extra lira here, people. After coffee and on my way to skating I popped into a cosmetic shop to buy a nail file. I assumed that such a thing would cost a lira or two. Wrong! Got to the counter and I was so surprised that I did pay the 19.50 lira for a package of 6 and walked back out the door. Yup, this is now up to 39.50.
To skating I go. And, oh, wait - a hockey game has appeared. No more sessions today? Guess I'll go home. Maybe to the market first. Catch a bus as it starts to rain. Good thing I have my new 5 lira umbrella. Well, we get to the station, I hop off the bus, open my umbrella and the handle completely separates from top! Too bad I bought a hoodie and not a rain coat. I dash off to the nearest covered area where a gentleman asks me what happened to my umbrella. Thank you very much, it appears to be broken (we have a lovely tense in Turkish for such appearances).
I wait until the rain lets up before I run to the taxi. A taxi from the bus station to my house is 5 lira. We're now up to 44.50 in unpreparedness money. As I'm in the taxi digging for my house keys, what happens to be sitting in the bottom of my bag but my umbrella.

On Shepherds

My language helper and I are working on describing John 10 in my lessons. The Good Shepherd. Of course, it helps to know a bit about shepherds when one wants to describe a passage on shepherds. I grew up in Juneau, Alaska which means I have not spent a large portion of my life observing sheep. My helper, on the other hand, spent part of her childhood in a village on the southern coast of Turkey. She has had the chance to see and observe sheep.
Sheep must have a shepherd. Without a shepherd they don't know where to go, don't know what to do. They're standing in the middle of the road, a car comes along and they don't move. In a standoff between a flock of sheep and a car, the sheep win. Sheep will eat their way off a cliff.
The shepherd truly does know the sheep and the sheep truly do know the shepherd. They will follow him, they will run to his voice. When a stranger comes into the fold, he can say whatever he wants, but the sheep will not hear him.
Ah, but she made an interesting comment. If a stranger comes into the fold and beats the sheep into submission, they will follow him. But it is not out of trust that they follow. Instead it is out of fear.
So, what have I learned? I've been thinking about this off and on for the last several days. Jesus is our Good Shepherd. We really are like sheep. Yes, I know I've heard this uncountable times before. But I've gotten a little closer to it in this process. And...those who come to kill, steal and destroy? They really can come in. But it is only the Good Shepherd who we will follow in trust.